Jake's Production Notes

I’ve been working on a new kind of project this year that’s a little off the beaten path for a typical promotional video for the university. A few months back our department was approached by the head of parking services at ETSU to create a series of videos that underscored most of the common issues with parking violations on campus while “softening” their image on campus. Our department director suggested that going with a narrative web series that featured the violations driven by a larger storyline might draw more viewers and broaden the comprehension while not sounding too preachy – thus Spaces was born.

By allowing our department to have a little creative freedom with the project, we decided to create a comedic series that focused on an awkward yet endearing online student named Mason who is tentatively pursuing traditional student Charlotte by offering to give her a ride to class. After holding auditions with ETSU theater students, we settled on the leads and the winner of the part of Mason suggested that he had a couple of friends who would be glad to participate – and the parts of Mason’s geeky friends Steve and Sheldon were created.

The first episode consisted of a two man crew featuring myself with my Canon 60D and our director, David Currie, with a Sony HXR-NX5u filming our leads played by Everett Tarlton (Mason) and Danielle Tucker (Charlotte) as well as guest stars Zach Starnes (Sheldon) and Josh Holley (Steve) in three different locations across campus one Friday afternoon based on a script by David Currie. Due to being shorthanded, we ran most of the production with lavalier mics except when we could afford to lock one camera down to use a boom mic.

I edited the resulting footage with Final Cut and Premiere, cleaned and graded the footage with After Effects, utilized Mocha and After Effects to handle the visual effects shots, and processed the audio with Audition. You can check out the results below and check back for parts 2-4!

Just finished a motion graphics project for rc aerial photography & cinematography company Got Aerial last week. This was my first project working with the Element 3D plugin for After Effects from VideoCopilot.

First impressions working with the plugin are definitely promising. The biggest issues I ran into depend on what 3d tracker you employ to work with Element. I had some solid tracks with the 3D Camera Tracker plugin that ships with AE CS6, but, too often, the shots proved to be a little too much for the tracker to deliver anything solid due to the constant changes in perspective. Ultimately, I relied on The Foundry’s CameraTracker for most of the shots with very reliable results. The reel title mountain ridge flyover, however, proved to be too much for either the 3D Camera Tracker or the Foundry CameraTracker. For this particular case, I found the best results with PfTrack which provided me with a rock-solid track that I was able to use for both the Element 3D Text and the main title “The Art of Flying” which I created in Cinema 4D. Originally, I had created the title with the Element plugin, but, due to some strange artifacting, I switched to C4D to solve the issue. Overall, it was a fun and challenging project and an excellent opportunity to log my first project run with Element & AE CS6!

Check out the final results below. All footage by Got Aerial LLC and music by Krewella.

Just finished a series of videos for the Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis doctoral program at ETSU’s College of Education. All videography was provided by Jason Jones and Zion Madden of the ETSU Office of eLearning and talent by Dr. Bethany Flora, Dr. Don Good, and ETSU president Dr. Brian Noland. I performed all post-production duties with Final Cut, Audition, and After Effects.

Just finished another pair of documentary vids for the George L. Carter Railroad Museum at ETSU. These videos give a quick tour of the construction of the upcoming Tweetsie Railroad exhibit led by museum director Dr. Fred Alsop.

Well, it’s that time of year again and, being inspired by seeing The Cabin in the Woods this weekend, I thought I’d try to put together a list of some great horror movies you’ve probably never seen. I’m not trying to assemble this list as a countdown or even a best of the best, but rather a compilation of great horror movies that never got the press they should have. So, in the spirit of the season, here’s the first of 31 great horror films you should see.

Day 1 – The Host

The Host is, first and foremost, a straight-up creature feature. Created by FX masters at The Orphanage, the monster is beautifully rendered and totally believable. The entire creature production was an amazing feat in and of itself as the post crew had to be able to teleconference regularly with the film’s creators in Korea with dailies and design samples to ensure the integrity of the filmmaker’s vision. In other words, watch the behind the scenes featurette if you can track down the DVD or Blu-ray to get a better idea of the logistic challenges of making the monster! Aside from the creature, alone, it’s actually a really good movie that will remind alot of people of Jaws. Anyway, here’s the links for more info . . .

The Host on IMdB

The Orphanage’s Transpacific Creature Effects for The Host

and, of course, the trailer

I came across this really interesting article on how several recent 3d films have been put together and thought I’d share!

http://www.fxguide.com/featured/art-of-stereo-conversion-2d-to-3d-2012/

A book trailer that I put together for Harlequin Publishing is now live! Check it out below:

Finally found the time to punch up my mograph reel. Have a look below:

Just found out that the new commercial spots that I re-designed for ETSU Online will start airing next week. Here’s a sample

Quick video I did for the ETSU Drumline. Jason Jones & Zion Madden of the Digital Media Services division of the Office of eLearning at ETSU provided videography, international students Giulia Andreazza and Paras Pageni provided the talent, and I performed all post-production with Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Audition, and Premiere.